A few highlights from today's tour of the liberal blogosphere.
James Wolcott takes issue with how the right-wing is trying to spin Osama's latest tape:
...a NY editorial titled 'Nuts!' begins with a little historical lesson explaining the cover line.
"It may be the most famous one-word sentence in American military history, and it's time to dust it off after yesterday's pronouncement from Osama bin Laden: 'Nuts!' That's how Brigadier Gen. Anthony McAuliffe responded to the Nazis when asked to surrender the town of Bastogne on December 19, 1944. Outnumbered and surrounded by Panzer tanks, McAuliffe gave his one word response to a courier."
Did you see the problem with this Victor Davis Hanson-ing? The United States isn't surrounded by superior forces, we're the world's military superpower, the one with the tanks and the "imperial grunts," and Bin Laden is a single individual holed up somewhere along the outlaw border, yet the NY Sun would have us believe we're the scrappy underdog with the never-say-die attitude.
Okay, James, good point on the historical metaphor being lame, but aren't we quibbling a little, here? I'd say "Nuts" to Osama Bin Laden too. Actually...I'm not sure what that even means, so I'd say something more modern, like "Go fuck yourself!"
(Thanks to
justacoolcat for the pic.)
Someone named DarkSyde has advice for turning the tables on the GOP
here:
So, when the extremist nutcases in our country start comparing patriotic Democrats and Progressives with Osama bin Laden, welcome the opportunity to point out that the present incarnation of the GOP is controlled by the religious right, the Theocons, who bear disturbing parallels to the most wanted man in the world. And you don't have to be able to whip out a bunch of quotes, all you need to remember is a simple soundbite and they will open the door for you.
It's a great idea, and it should stick...but almost five years later, the Osama-Jesusfreak connection just doesn't seem to have any staying power. Remember the hubbub over Jerry Falwell's comments immediately after 9-11, blaming the attacks on gays and the ACLU? It was clear to me then, and I'm sure a lot of other intelligent people, that the only thing separating Osama from the Left Behind crowd was semantics. One group calls their god Jesus, the other Allah. Both dieties, despite using different terminology, are intolerant hateful gods, but since each religion is so individually self-righteous, their followers can't see past these similarities. To Christian fundamentalists, hating gay people isn't wrong because it's divinely sanctioned, and to Muslims, so is hating infidels. If God's on your side, you can't be wrong, right? (I suppose that all depends on whether God is
really on your side or not...but I'll leave that discussion for another day.)
DarkSyde has
more perspective here:
They are vehemently against abortion, they resist progressive woman's rights. They view homosexuality as a crime against nature and God, some advocate the death penalty as an option for it. Separation of Church and State is despised by these folks; they insist the nation is founded on the principles of their religion, and they work hard to bring that de facto theocracy about. They deplore strong language, gay characters, and sexual content on TV and in the media. And they ignore the Geneva Convention when it suits their ideological purposes, including provisions against torture or due process. They're anti-stem cell research, pro-creationism, and generally distrustful of science. These folks are easily whipped into a state of frenzy with ideological manipulation to the point where they will commit violence, or at least tacitly endorse that violence is acceptable, if it advances their Divine agenda. They then take great pains to justify that violence, including unprovoked attack of civilian areas, under certain conditions, with convoluted theological gymnastics. They are almost to the man pro-death penalty ... Am I railing against the religious right again?
Nope, that would be Al Qaeda, who if they were Christian instead of Muslim, would probably by considered "allies" in the culture wars by the American religious right.
Glenn Greenwald from Crooks and Liars on the GOP's 2006 election strategy:
What lies at the center of so many of our current political controversies is fear. Fear-mongering is the one and only weapon which Bush followers use time and again to solidify their support. When Karl Rove says, as he did yesterday, that "national security" is going to be the centerpiece of the GOP pitch leading into the 2006 elections, what he means is that they are going to spend the next 10 months doing everything possible to scare Americans as much as possible so that they once again dispense with all other issues and throw themselves into the arms of the party which promises to be their Protector.
So in other words, nothing has changed. Bush will continue to ride the swells of 9-11 like Laird Hamilton on a big wave. He'll remind townhalls stocked with his breathless supporters that "Terrorists are trying to kill us" and that he's committed to defeating them.
It sounds great on paper, and if you're one of the bedwetters who lives in fear of the next terrorist attack, the "Be afraid...be very afraid" message might resonate with you, but it's really little more than chest thumping. True there hasn't been a terrorist attack in the United States since 9-11-01. But prior to that, there hadn't been a terrorist attack in the United States since 4-19-95, the day when a truck full of fertilizer destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. (It's interesting to note that the perpetrator of that attack, up until then the worst terrorist attack on US soil, was a right-wing white boy who presumably prayed to Jesus right before they executed him.) Of course, that's not to say that terrorism isn't a problem, or an important problem. But let's have some perspective, shall we?
When compared to catastrophes of a similar nature, 9-11 is not the earth-shattering event that the collective consciousness makes it out to be. I've been accused of being smug by dissecting this line of thought, but consider other atrocities throughout history and see how 9-11 stacks up. You can go back as far as you want, from the Trojan War on down to Masada, the Crusades, even including such modern horrors as the Holocaust. Hell, if you want to keep it recent, just go back to the 90s, where at the time, the eastern edge of Europe was re-fighting old battles in the Balkans.
In July 1995, the Serb army encircled a UN-designated "safe area" (which in UN speak means, well, nothing) called Srebrenica. Srebrenica, an ancient mountain town (the Romans operated a silver mine nearby) in Bosnia, had been bulging for the last two years with tens of thousands of mostly-Muslim refugees, who had either been forcibly removed by Serbian ethnic cleansing or white hot fear. (And this wasn't "Chicken Little" the-sky-is-falling fear; this was they-killed-my-whole-family-and-now-they're-going-to-kill-me fear.) Now with Srebrenica effectively in Serbian control, thousands of refugees attempted to escape through the woods to nearby Tuzla, a Bosnian army stronghold. For a whole week, it was open season on Muslims in those woods. When it was all over, the Serbs had massacred over 7000 Muslim men and boys.
What happened in Srebrenica was whole-scale slaughter. It wasn't an attempt to get a misguided cause on the front page of every newspaper in the world, or a largely symbolic attack relying on collateral damage to make its statement. This was a coordinated effort to wipe an ethnic group off the planet, and it almost worked. The 7000 Muslims killed during that horrible week in July will not be coming back. To make matters worses, justice has yet to be served. The perpetrators of the attack (Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) are still free men, wanted by the Hague for war crimes but still being protected (at least informally) by Serbia.
So let's just compare these two events, as disparate as they may seem, for a moment.
On 9-11, 19 hijackers used 4 airplanes to launch simultaneous sneak attacks on multiple mostly civilian targets. 3 out of 4 attacks were successful. The goal, to create terror in the population and get mentioned in the papers, bringing attention to their cause of Islamic revolution.
In July 95, a large division of the Serbian army used war jets, artillery, anti-aircraft guns (pointed at the ground), small arms, chemical weapons, and knives to launch attacks on a UN-Designated safe area teeming with civilian refugees. The goal, clearing the land of Muslims, killing as many as possible in the process.
On 9-11, most of those who died from "collateral damage." They were passengers on a plane, employees at the office, or rescue workers caught in the damage. In other words, innocent victims, civilians mostly, whose only crime was being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
In Srebrenica, most of those who died were shot, blown up, or had their throats slit, killing methods just as heinous but more personal and much more deliberate. Their crime? Being Muslim in a war of Serb conquest, or in other words, being the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time. They too were mostly civilians.
Now both of these events, 9-11 and Srebrenica, are unquestionably horrific. It's a stain on our species that we as
homo sapiens would be capable of either atrocity. But it's only our patriotic empathies as Americans that makes 9-11 the be-all, end-all change-everything event that most people consider it to be. In purely human terms, the death and destruction outside Srebrenica in 1995 was twice as bad and more than seven times as long. The methods, conventional weapons on a civilian population, and the eventual goal, cleaning out the gene pool by murder, are just as horrific, if not more, than those of the 9-11 hijackers, with their unconventional weapons and murder-as-PR idealogy.
The difference, I suppose, is that we all watched over and over that day as the planes kept hitting the towers and the towers kept falling. We lived with those horrific images for weeks, months. The survivors live with them still. 9-11, whether we like it or not, is seared into our consciousness in a way that greater tragedies are not. And that's why it remains a potent image, an emblem easily exploited by those who are used to exploiting opportunities.
When it comes to outrage, I direct it mostly at the wrongdoers who commit these atrocities. In Srebrenica, it was the Serbs and their maniacal commander, Mladic. On 9-11 it was Osama and his terrorist toadies. But there are other layers of outrage that should be addressed. What the fuck was the UN doing in Srebrenica? Why designate it a safe area, ensuring that it would become a refugee magnet, then do nothing to protect it? (Interesting fact: The only country willing to send a military force large enough to protect Srebrenica was Iran. The UN declined the offer and enlisted the Dutch, who set up a handful of observation posts manned by a handful of soldiers. They put up no resistance when the Serbs rolled in.)
Unlike Srebrenica, there was no negligence on anyone's part. Perhaps airport security, but at the time who could have predicted what eventually happened? Then there's that whole thing about Bush getting the memo that says "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Attack in America." Even then, no one could have predicted what was going to happen. (In fact, I suspect that Osama and his conspirators were privately surprised at the level of death and destruction. I mean, come on. Flying planes into the White House and the Pentagon? That's kid stuff. The Columbine killers thought of that a long time ago. That's just...stupid.)
But the outrage comes from using 9-11 as a crutch, as an excuse, as a mea culpa for pretty much anything. And that's what it's become with the Bush Administration. It's their get out of jail free card, the master key that unlocks all the doors for them. Because of 9-11, the Bush Administration have reserved for themselves powers that no administration should have. Wiretapping without a warrant? Uh, no. Declaring people "enemy combatants" and holding them without due process? Uh, no. Legalizing torture? Uh, no.
And I'm not even going to mention the country the Bush Administration destroyed in our name. 9-11 was the reason for that too.
